Book Image

Arduino for Kids

By : Rishi Gaurav Bhatnagar, Vijay Varada
Book Image

Arduino for Kids

By: Rishi Gaurav Bhatnagar, Vijay Varada

Overview of this book

The mission of this book is to integrate technology with the tools that children already use for crafts so that they feel that the technology is an extension of their playtime. We use coding, sensors, and micro-controllers integrated with art and craft supplies, origami, and Playdough. There are 10 fun-filled chapters that talk to children directly, and give clear instructions for non-technical parents too. We use Arduino as the controller of choice due to its easy availability and large community. By the end of the book, children will comfortably be able to set up their Arduino, read and understand code, manipulate code, and ultimately write their own code for projects. They will also be able to use basic sensors and know how components connect to each other. All the learning takes place with lots of colorful pictures and the circuits are neatly presented using wiring.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Arduino for Kids
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Digging deep into Arduino libraries


We had discussed functions in the The working section of Chapter 6, Safety Box. If you would have thought that we will need to write our own function for getting the distance using our sensor, you would have been right, if it wasn't for, drum roll please....

Libraries!!

An Arduino library is a file that is a package of functions and declarations for other programs to use. Since we need to use the ultrasonic proximity sensor, instead of implementing the math ourselves, and writing our own functions, we can use the <Ultrasonic Distance Library>, which has the functions required to calculate and work with the distance sensor.

Downloading and installing an Arduino Library

To download and install the Arduino library, you must follow the following instructions:

  1. For this project, you may download the library from:

    http://playground.arduino.cc/Code/NewPing

  2. To install the library, put the NewPing folder in libraries.

  3. In the Arduino IDE, create a new sketch (or...